The doctor reflected for a moment and then said in a low voice:
“You think it’s poison, of course … but what poison? … Besides, I see no toxic symptoms. … It would have to be. … But what are you doing? What’s the matter? …”
The two men were talking outside a little sitting-room on the first floor, where Jeanne, seizing the opportunity while the doctor was with her father, had begun her evening meal. Lupin, who was watching her through the open door, saw her lift a cup to her lips and take a few sups.
Suddenly, he rushed at her and caught her by the arm:
“What are you drinking there?”
“Why,” she said, taken aback, “only tea!”
“You pulled a face of disgust … what made you do that?”
“I don’t know … I thought. …”
“You thought what?”
“That … that it tasted rather bitter. … But I expect that comes from the medicine I mixed with it.”
“What medicine?”
“Some drops which I take at dinner … the drops which you prescribed for me, you know, doctor.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Guéroult, “but that medicine has no taste of any kind. … You know it hasn’t, Jeanne, for you have been taking it for a fortnight and this is the first time. …”
“Quite right,” said the girl, “and this does have a taste. … There—oh!—my mouth is still burning.”
Dr. Guéroult now took a sip from the cup; “Faugh!” he exclaimed, spitting it out again. “There’s no mistake about it. …”
Lupin, on his side, was examining the bottle containing the medicine; and he asked:
“Where is this bottle kept in the daytime?”
But Jeanne was unable to answer. She had put her hand to her heart and, wan-faced, with staring eyes, seemed to be suffering great pain:
“It hurts … it hurts,” she stammered.
The two men quickly carried her to her room and laid her on the bed:
“She ought to have an emetic,” said Lupin.
“Open the cupboard,” said the doctor. “You’ll see a medicine-case. … Have you got it? … Take out one of those little tubes. … Yes, that one. … And now some hot water. … You’ll find some on the tea-tray in the other room.”
Jeanne’s own maid came running up in answer to the bell. Lupin told her that Mlle. Darcieux had been taken unwell, for some unknown reason.
He next returned to the little dining-room, inspected the sideboard and the cupboards, went down to the kitchen and pretended that the doctor had sent him to ask about M. Darcieux’s diet. Without appearing to do so, he catechized the cook, the butler, and Baptiste, the lodge-keeper, who had his meals at the manor-house with the servants. Then he went back to the doctor:
“Well?”
“She’s asleep.”
“Any danger?”
“No. Fortunately, she had only taken two or three sips. But this is the second time today that you have saved her life, as the analysis of this bottle will show.”
“Quite superfluous to make an analysis, doctor. There is no doubt about the fact that there has been an attempt at poisoning.”
“By whom?”
“I can’t say. But the demon who is engineering all this business clearly knows the ways of the house. He comes and goes as he pleases, walks about in the park, files the dog’s chain, mixes poison with the food and, in short, moves and acts precisely as though he were living the very life of her—or rather of those—whom he wants to put away.”
“Ah! You really believe that M. Darcieux is threatened with the same danger?”
“I have not a doubt of it.”
“Then it must be one of the servants? But that is most unlikely! Do you think … ?”
“I think nothing, doctor. I know nothing. All I can say is that the situation is most tragic and that we must be prepared for the worst. Death is here, doctor, shadowing the people in this house; and it will soon strike at those whom it is pursuing.”
“What’s to be done?”
“Watch, doctor. Let us pretend that we are alarmed about M. Darcieux’s health and spend the night in here. The bedrooms of both the father and daughter are close by. If anything happens, we are sure to hear.”
There was an easy-chair in the room. They arranged to sleep in it turn and turn about.
In reality, Lupin slept for only two or three hours. In the middle of the night he left the room, without disturbing his companion, carefully looked round the whole of the house and walked out through the principal gate.
He reached Paris on his motorcycle at nine o’clock in the morning. Two of his friends, to whom he telephoned on the road, met him there. They all three spent the day in making searches which Lupin had planned out beforehand.
He set out again hurriedly at six o’clock; and never, perhaps, as he told me subsequently, did he risk his life with greater temerity than in his breakneck ride, at a mad rate of speed, on a foggy December evening, with the light of his lamp hardly able to pierce through the darkness.
He sprang from his bicycle outside the gate, which was still open, ran to the house and reached the first floor in a few bounds.
There was no one in the little dining-room.
Without hesitating, without knocking, he walked into Jeanne’s bedroom:
“Ah, here you are!” he said, with a sigh of relief, seeing Jeanne and the doctor sitting side by side, talking.
“What? Any news?” asked the doctor, alarmed at seeing such a state of agitation in a man whose coolness he had had occasion to observe.
“No,” said Lupin. “No news. And here?”
“None here, either. We have just left M. Darcieux. He has had an excellent day and he ate his dinner with a good appetite. As for Jeanne, you can see for yourself, she has all her pretty colour back again.”
“Then she must go.”
“Go? But it’s out of the question!” protested the girl.
“You must go, you must!” cried Lupin, with real violence, stamping his foot on the floor.
He at once mastered himself, spoke a few words of apology and then, for three or four minutes, preserved a complete silence, which
